As simple as the whole idea of logical progression sounds, the methods by which we can make our compositions move in a sensible manner from beginning to end are many and varied. For example, we can arrange our thoughts in time order, spatial order, order of importance, or order of specificity.
Time order is probably the most widely used form of logical progression. Simply put, time order means that ideas are ordered in the order in which they occurred, beginning to end. "A happened; then B happened; then C happened." Most narratives are presented in time order. Consider the story you might tell your friends about your experiences over the most recent weekend. "Well, we left the dorm around seven, went down to Seville, and waited in line for forty-five minutes. When we got in, we danced for a while, and then Bob got busted for underage drinking. After that experience, we called it a night." The logical order of this very short story is temporal (time-oriented), since the events of the evening are presented in the order in which they occurred.
As its name implies, order of importance allows a writer to present his ideas in a rank-order fashion, either most important to least important or least important to most important. Generally for student writing, the most common and effective order of importance strategy is that of least important to most important; thus such a composition "ends with a bang." However, most important to least important is often used, especially with teaching; this book is ordered in this matter. Importantly, order of importance progression makes a composition very easy to follow and understand and also allows the writer to make some effective judgments about just what is and what is not important to his thesis.
Order of specificity is a ranking of the most generally idea to the most specific idea or vice-versa. The general to specific sort of progression works best in scholastic writing. A good example of the general to specific progression occurs when a writer begins by laying out a general plan and then goes on to give examples and details which illustrate the plan more fully. Students probably find this progression most useful when writing process essays; the world uses this format most often when giving directions. All in all, order of specificity helps the writer most by allowing him to present his major plan or idea to the reader and then prove to the reader the plan's validity through specific examples.
Spatial order is order that relies on space for its logic. If a writer begins a descriptive passage by focusing first on his immediate area, then moving on to describe things that are further removed from him, and then finishing by describing things that are very far away from him, the writer has used a writer-to-horizon spatial order. Of course, the writer could also begin with a distant point and gradually move toward himself; he would then by using a horizon-to-writer logical progression. However, what a writer would not do, since such a method would be illogical, would be to begin by discussing things at an intermediate distance, move to the horizon, then return to the immediate area. So, spatial order allows a writer to work with the space around either himself or a central object in a logical fashion.
Examples
All of the above strategies for progression can be used at any level of a composition. There must be a logical progression behind the order of a composition's topic sentences, and there must be a logical progression of sentences within each paragraph. In the following examples and exercises, we will consider both levels.
Let us begin with the larger picture and examine the ways we might make the topic sentence of an essay progress logically from one to another. If you recall the essay that was discussed above on women in combat, you'll remember that we came up with a tree diagram for the thesis and topic sentences which look like this:
Now, referring to our above discussion of possible methods of logical progression and our earlier mention that the tree diagram shows, from left to right, the order in which our thoughts will be presented, we can see that the order which we chose earlier was the order of specificity. Our first topic, "Women are physically weaker than men," is the most general of the three, and our last, "The American tradition does not support women fighting in wars," is the most specific. Thus, the paragraphs of this essay will exhibit a logical progression of its ideas through the order of specificity.
The following example might shed more light on the process of establishing a logical progression of the major ideas in an essay. Assume that we are working together on an essay on the topic of governmental censorship of art. Using the diagramming technique, we have begun with the thesis
Once we have added to the diagram our reasons for believing the thesis to be a true and valid statement, our diagram looks like this:
Given that these are valid reasons that will support our thesis, we are now faced with the challenge of logically ordering them so that their progression will both make sense to the average reader and make our argument stronger. Our four basic choices among the methods of logical progression are time order, order of importance, order of specificity, and spatial order. Obviously, spatial order will not help us very much, since we don't intend to work with physical space in our essay. Time order also seems somewhat unusable, since our essay does not look as if it will work as a narrative. Thus we are left with two viable choices: order of importance and order of specificity.
Since wither of the two will be workable, let's examine both avenues. If we arrange our essay by order of specificity, it will look like this when we arrange it in a tree diagram:
Since the most general assertion is that certain art forms depict possibly damaging scenes, that paragraph will be the first of the essay's body, and since the most specific assertion is that certain criminals feel that a currently legitimate art form was an influence on them, that paragraph will be the last of the essay's body. The organizational scheme does make sense.
However, we might also arrange the points of the essay in the order of importance, in which case it would turn out slightly differently.
Since the fact that some individual criminals blame a currently legitimate form of art for their criminal development is less important in scope than the huge sorts of crimes that some governments have committed with the aid of the artistic community, the two paragraphs have switched places from our earlier diagram.
One should emphasize the fact that neither of these progressions is any better than the other. The choice rests ultimately with the author, who will decide which progression makes the most sense based on his preconceived idea of how the essay should accomplish its ends.